Penpal

by Dathan Auerbach

  A little over a week before we were supposed to move, we were carrying some of our things out to the car when Boxes seized the opportunity and ran full-tilt into the yard. My mom scrambled to catch him, but the cat evaded her and ran under the house. She cursed that she had already packed the can-opener and wasn’t sure where it was, and she tried hopelessly to lure him out by calling him while I pretended to go look for the can-opener so that I wouldn’t have to go under the house in pursuit. Eventually my mom, probably completely aware of my little scam, moved one of the panels on the side of the house and went into the crawlspace.

  I stood outside the opening, listening to my mother’s rustling under the house. “Watch for him!” she called to me, and so I crouched down just in front of the hole, ready to catch Boxes if he ran out. “C’mere!” my mother roared, and I heard Boxes howl as he often would when he was caught.

  My mom came out with Boxes quickly and seemed unnerved, which made me feel even better about not having had to go in myself. She took him inside and made some phone calls while I sat on the bottom bunk of my bed and played with a Ninja Turtle action figure. I waited eagerly for Josh’s parents to drop him off so we could play.

  A couple minutes later, my mother came into my room. She was still covered in dirt from having crawled under the house, and when she moved, I could sometimes see the dirt break loose from her skin and rain down onto the carpet of my floor. The unhinged look in her eyes was still there, and, holding the phone tightly in her hand, she told me that she had spoken to the realtor and we were going to move into the other house right away. She said it as if it was excellent news, but I had thought that we had more time in the house – we weren’t supposed to move until the end of the next week, and it was only Tuesday.

  We weren’t even finished packing yet, but my mom said sometimes it was just easier to replace things than pack them and haul them all over the city. I didn’t even get to grab the rest of my boxed clothes as my mom ushered me out of my room and out the back door. “What about Josh?” I protested. “What about him?” she snapped. I reminded her that he was supposed to come over later that day, and she said that we would have to reschedule our play-date. When I asked if I could at least call him to say goodbye, she said that I could just call him from our new house.

  We left in the moving van, and I watched my home and my entire life slide out of sight as we rounded the bend and exited the neighborhood.

  I had left my home behind, but I managed to stay in touch with Josh over the next several years; which was surprising since we no longer went to the same school. Our parents weren’t close friends, but they knew that we were, and so they would accommodate our desire to see one another by driving us back and forth for sleepovers – sometimes every weekend. The distance did little to weaken the strength of our friendship. As a matter of fact, in many ways our bond actually grew stronger; being farther apart meant that nurturing the friendship was no longer as easy as a taking a five minute car ride or waiting a couple extra stops in the school bus. We had to work to stay friends now, and I think that helped us appreciate what we had.

  At Christmas, after the summer that I moved away, I got a number of presents, but only one that I really remember. I unwrapped a box and opened it to see a walkie-talkie. It wasn’t in any kind of packaging, and the cold, utilitarian design stood in sharp contrast to the brightly-colored tissue paper that lay under it. I gave my mom a quizzical and confused look as I picked it up. It was a little heavy for me, and it seemed pretty sturdy. As I ran my eyes over its knobs and buttons, my mom smiled and told me to give it a try while tapping the rectangular protrusion on the side of the walkie. I depressed the button and spoke.

  Hello?

  I waited, but there was no response. I looked back up at my mom who knelt down and looked at the top of the walkie-talkie and then at a piece of paper she had in her hand. She turned one of the knobs and told me to try it again.

  Hello?

  I waited again, but it was still silent. I was starting to think that she might be playing a trick on me when the sound of static suddenly burst through the speaker on the walkie. The acoustic fuzz soon gave way to a voice.

  Hey! You there?!

  Josh?!

  Yeah, man! This is so cool!

  I looked up at my mom, and she was looking down at me with a warm smile on her face. Josh was still chattering away on the walkie-talkie – his sentences awkwardly punctuated in the middle by sharp pulses of static. My mom said, “Merry Christmas,” and bent down to hug me.

  Our parents had pooled their money to get us these walkie-talkies. They were very nice – too nice for boys in the second grade – and were advertised to work across a range that extended past the distance between our houses; they also had batteries that could last for days if the walkie-talkie was on but not used. The walkies would only occasionally work well enough that we could talk across the city, but when we stayed over at each other’s houses, we’d use them around the house, talking in mock radio-speak that we had taken from movies, and they worked great for that.

  Every now and then when I stayed at Josh’s house, we would manage to sneak away and continue our explorations in the woods, but these adventures were never sanctioned – my mom had told Josh’s parents that she didn’t want me going off into the woods. She said she worried that I might get hurt, and she just wasn’t comfortable with taking that chance when she was miles away, despite the fact that Josh’s mother was a nurse.

  This restriction was usually fine since there were a good number of things to do at Josh’s house, and I liked being there. His parents were both nice, but were very rarely at the house at the same time since they kept different schedules. Josh’s mom was a nurse at the same hospital that put my arm in a cast when I fell from the tree, and his dad was a construction worker. He was a big man, but he also seemed genuinely kind.

  He had caught us playing in the woods once when I was staying the weekend with Josh. When I begged Josh’s father not to tell my mom, he talked to me like an adult, even though I was only eight years old. He explained why he had to tell her and why I shouldn’t ask him to lie. Of course, I still didn’t want him to tell my mother, but the fact that he was willing to actually talk to me about it made it easier to accept.

  My mom had screamed furiously at me and threatened to ban me from going to Josh’s house ever again. I couldn’t fully understand this severe reaction, but I didn’t want to lose Josh as a friend, so when I visited him, we played video games and played in his room, and Josh and I continued to be ferried to each other’s house almost every weekend. I never really thought about it, but the fact that our friendship didn’t atrophy when I moved away was mostly thanks to the efforts that our parents made.

  Thanks to them, we were still friends when we were ten years old …

  One weekend in fifth grade, I was staying at Josh’s and my mom called me to say goodnight; she was still pretty watchful even when she couldn’t actually watch me, but I had gotten so used to it that I didn’t even notice it, even if Josh did. She sounded upset, so I asked her if I had done something.

  She told me that Boxes was missing.

  This must have been a Saturday night because I was going home the next day since there was school on Monday. Boxes had been missing since Friday afternoon – I gathered that my mother had not seen him since returning home after dropping me off at Josh’s the day before. She must have decided to tell me he was missing because if he didn’t come home before I did, then I would be devastated; not only by his absence, but by the fact that she had kept it from me. She told me not to worry. “He’ll come back. He always does!”

  But Boxes didn’t come back.

  Three weekends later, I stayed at Josh’s again. I had spent every day after school walking around the neighborhood calling for Boxes, and listening, hoping to hear him. I could think of almost nothing but finding my cat and was noticeably downtrodden by his absence; he was my oldest friend. My mom told me that there had been ma
ny times when pets had disappeared from home for weeks or even months, only to return on their own; she said they always knew where home was and would always try to get back. I was explaining this to Josh when a thought struck me so hard that I interrupted my own sentence to say it aloud.

  “What if Boxes thought of the wrong home?”

  Josh was confused. “What? He lives with you. He knows where his home is.”

  “Yeah, but he grew up somewhere else, Josh. He was raised in my old house. Maybe he still thinks of that place as home … like I do.”

  “Ohhh I get it. Well that’d be great! We’ll tell my dad tomorrow, and he’ll take us over there so we can look!”

  “No, he won’t. My mom said that we couldn’t ever go back to that place because the new owners wouldn’t wanna be bothered. She said that she told your mom and dad the same thing.”

  Josh persisted. “Okay. Then we’ll just go out exploring tomorrow and make our way to your old house—”

  “No! C’mon, Josh! Remember the last time we got caught playing in the woods? Even if your dad doesn’t catch us, if we get spotted, your dad will find out and then so will my mom! I wouldn’t be allowed to come spend the night anymore … my old house is just a couple neighborhoods away.”

  We sat there silent in his room for a moment before I said what I think Josh already knew I was going to say.

  “We have to go there ourselves … We have to go there tonight …”

  It didn’t take that much convincing to get Josh on board since he was usually the one to come up with ideas like this, but we had never snuck out of his house before. While we waited until everyone was asleep, we discussed our strategy for getting there, while also debating how we would explain Boxes’ sudden appearance to our parents if we should happen to find him.

  About an hour after Josh’s parents came in to tell us to go to bed, we crept out of Josh’s room to go find a flashlight. Josh knew that his dad had several, but he had no idea where he kept them; the garage seemed like the most obvious place. We moved silently through the house and eased the interior door to the garage open. It gave a faint squeak, and we paused before pulling it open and passing through the doorway.

  I went to turn the light on, and Josh hissed at me. There was no real way that the light in the garage would have woken anyone in the house up, but when you’re attempting to be discreet, it’s hard to know where to draw the line. Suddenly, all actions become covert by default – like when two friends begin whispering, and after a while they find that their voices are still hushed, but they can’t remember why.

  It was appropriate enough to comb through the garage in darkness, though; using light to find itself seemed like cheating anyway. Josh’s dad had hundreds of tools, and we both squinted, trying to see through the darkness to determine if one of them might be what we needed; if we had needed a wrench instead of a light, we would have been in business.

  “Hey …” Josh broke the silence.

  “What?”

  “Hey man …”

  “What?!” I whispered as loudly as I could.

  “I can’t see anything in here.”

  “I know. Me neither.”

  “Do you have a flashlight I could borrow?”

  There was a slight pause before he followed his joke with “Get it?” at which point my hands shot up to my mouth as I attempted to hold back the laughter that was building inside me. I had been in many situations before where I wanted to laugh but couldn’t; I was a veteran of those battles, but in almost all occasions I could permit myself a faint chuckle, or I at least would have the forbidding stare of my mother to anchor me. Here, my throat clicked and my body shook as I struggled to subdue myself.

  I looked at Josh; he was in even worse shape. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he was actually biting his hand to suppress a rising fit. Josh and I stood with our hands to our mouths allowing only the occasional snort and squeak to escape. The more I saw him trying to hold back his laughter, the more I felt that I no longer could. As I sensed the storm reaching its crescendo, I quickly turned around so I wouldn’t be caught in a feedback loop with Josh, and gradually I calmed myself down.

  As I regained composure and could focus on something other than being quiet, I saw a flashlight sitting on a workbench. I walked over to pick it up and followed Josh back into the house. When we were walking back to Josh’s room, I could still feel the rumblings of laughter in my chest. The situation had passed, and I had stifled myself, but just as you can suppress a sneeze with enough effort, the irritants are still there. Before I could even think to stop myself, I began giggling in the hallway, and Josh shushed me harshly as he ushered me into his room.

  “I’m sorry, man!” I managed to force out amongst my laughter.

  “Dude, shut up!” Josh snapped. “You’ll wake up Veronica!”

  I had been focusing so hard on not laughing in the garage that, after the dam had finally breached, I had forgotten for a moment that Josh’s room was right across the hall from his older sister’s. I was so embarrassed by the thought of her hearing me giggle that the laughter inside me died, and with it went the brief moment of forgetfulness about why we had gone looking for the flashlight to begin with.

  “You ready?” I asked Josh.

  “Yeah. Is this everything?” he said, as he gestured toward the flashlight while picking up the walkie-talkies.

  I felt a little foolish – I hadn’t even thought to bring the walkie-talkies, despite the fact that this was the one time where we might actually get to use them.

  “Yeah, I think so.” I responded coolly. “Let’s go.”

  Escaping Josh’s house turned out to be much easier than finding a flashlight in it. The window in his room opened to the back yard, and he had a latched wooden fence that wasn’t locked. The fence opened to the side of the house, and we crept along quietly as we passed under his parents’ bedroom window. We made a sharp turn away from his house and toward the trashcan-lined street. Once we were in the clear, we slipped off into the night, flashlight and walkie-talkies in hand.

  There were two ways to get from Josh’s house to my old house. We could walk on the street and make all the turns, or go through the woods, which would take about half the time. It would have taken about two hours to walk there taking the street, but I suggested that we go that way anyway; I told him it was because I didn’t want to get lost. Josh scoffed at this idea and insisted that between the two of us we would have no trouble finding our way. I pointed out that it had been years since I’d walked through these woods; he waved his hands at me dismissively and said that he doubted that anyone knew these woods better than us after the lengths that we had gone to in order to explore them, even at night.

  “But what about when we were kids? You remember how thick the woods get.”

  “But we’re not kids anymore,” he responded.

  Before I could rebut, he added that if we were seen walking along the street, someone might recognize him and tell his dad; he threatened to go home if we didn’t just take the shortcut. I accepted his preference because I didn’t want to go by myself. Nervously, I turned with Josh toward the line of trees across a vacant lot and walked on.

  Josh didn’t know about the last time I walked through these woods at night and how hard it had been to find my way out.

  The woods seemed much less frightening than I remembered. I was older now, and I found that with a friend and a flashlight the trees seemed less ominous and the sounds less foreboding. We seemed to be making pretty good time, too; though I wasn’t entirely sure where we were. But Josh appeared confident enough, and that bolstered my morale.

  While not infused with the general eeriness that I had expected, there was still something surreal about the woods. This feeling was, I’m sure, at least partially informed by my memories of this place, but there was something about the way the trees twisted together in the dim light of the moon, as the wind rustled and whistled through them, that made it feel like a wholly diffe
rent place than it was during the day. The fact that a place this untamed was wedged between stretches of houses and neighborhoods made it seem even more bizarre, but in truth, I knew there was nothing strange about any of this. My thoughts were just wandering as I tried to think about anything other than what it was like to be lost in these woods. I needed to break the silence.

  “How much farther do you think it is?” We were on Josh’s side of the woods, so I thought he might have a better sense of the distance.

  “I dunno. A while, I guess.”

  “Well what’s ‘a while’ mean?”

  “I don’t know, man! On the bright side, how far can you walk into the woods, right?”

  The question reverberated in my ears.

  “What did you say?” I uttered flatly, as my feet dragged to a halt.

  Josh turned his head back a little over his shoulder and said with a half-grin, “How far can you walk into the woods?”

  My face felt hot. That question. I hadn’t thought of that question in years – since the night it replayed over and over again in my head as I walked what could have been the same path we were taking now. And with the question now again ringing in my ears, the same panicked feelings that had prompted me to think of it that night as I wandered endlessly through this place began to return. I couldn’t think of why he would say that or where he had even heard it. My mind began whirling in a gyre as it clouded with that familiar feeling of being certain that you are dreaming while also knowing that you’re not.

  Josh hadn’t stopped walking when I had, but I could hear him just up ahead of me, and I could see the meandering of the flashlight’s beam through the trees. I began walking again and caught up with my friend.

  The bush was getting thicker and the trees more tangled. As we negotiated our way through it all, I was about to press Josh about what he had just said when the strap on my walkie-talkie got caught on a branch. Josh had the flashlight, and as I was struggling to get the walkie free, I heard Josh say,